David Levien - Where the dead lay

“Get me the linkage.”

Behr sat outside a Circle K store, lacing up a pair of dry shoes he had in the trunk, downing a quart bottle of Gatorade, and feeling handled when his phone rang. He’d heard old detectives, lifers, espouse a theory that there were no coincidences. That everything on a case was connected and that there wasn’t such thing as separate cases in the first place, that everything, all the cases an investigator looked at his whole career long were interrelated in one long indecipherable chain that could only be understood at the very end. Behr didn’t go in much for the mystical bullshit, but it was easy enough to see what they meant at the moment. Aurelio had been killed, and he’d walked into it, and Dominic had seen him there, and his name had rung a bell so he’d reported it to Pomeroy who’d seen his opportunity. Maybe Pomeroy had smelled the connection and had gone outside of the department because he suspected what Behr had now learned about Bustamante-he had a dirty cop tipping and steering and otherwise protecting the Schlegels from the inside. Maybe Pomeroy hadn’t had the Schlegels or even Bustamante at all. There was still a lot that wasn’t clear to him, especially whether or not he was willing to stick, or whether he should drop it and walk away and live his life, whatever that amounted to at the moment.

Behr reached slowly for his still-ringing phone. “Yeah?” he said quietly, without even bothering to check the caller ID.

“Sorry it took so long, Frank,” a voice said.

“Tommy?” It was Tommy Connaughton. “You got something?” Behr asked.

“I finally got into that Santos account.”

“Okay.”

“But the checks weren’t presented at a bank. They were cashed at Check Express, a Western Union-type place.”

“Shit.”

“So I hacked them, no charge,” Connaughton said, a smile of pride in his voice.

“Good man. And?”

“Flavia Inez. Or Inez Flavia. I don’t know which-it was recorded differently on each transaction. Someone there is worse with the Spanish than me.”

“She’s the girlfriend,” Behr said, certain of what he’d suspected at first but had too quickly moved off.

“What?”

“Nothing, go on.”

“Anyway, those two checks-one for four thousand, the other for seventy-five hundred-she cashed ’em.”

“Thanks, Tommy, send me a bill,” Behr said, hanging up and swinging his feet inside the car. He turned the ignition and started to drive.

It was quarter to eight by the time Behr reached Dannels’s house. It wasn’t his final destination, but he needed another piece and hoped he wasn’t too late. He jumped out of his car, in time to see Dannels backing a well-kept Bravada out of the driveway, and ran around to the driver’s window.

“Oi, mate, you look like an all-night trucker,” Dannels said, his hair still wet from a shower, a conservative striped tie knotted around his thick neck.

“Hey, man, I know you’re on your way to work, but did Aurelio come into any money recently?” It was a question Behr should’ve asked the first time if he’d been thinking straight, but he hadn’t been.

Dannels’s eyes lit. “He hadn’t come into any. He’d won some.”

“Won it how, fighting?” Behr asked, knowing the answer.

“Nah, he dumped his fight purses into the school. That was his business. This was his fun. He loved the gambling. Lotto and pea shake,” Dannels said. “Must be a cultural thing. I ran the probabilities for him many times, the odds of winning long term at lottery-style betting-it’s piss poor. But he kept spending thirty, forty, fifty bucks a day on that crap. Then he hit a couple of shakes a few months back, five or ten thousand, I don’t remember how much. He was so fucking happy, mate. Acting quite vindicated about his gambling prowess with me.” Dannels smiled despite himself. It was what Behr knew, that the wins jibed with the deposits in the checkbook. And there was something beyond that, too. He knew that Aurelio hadn’t met Flavia Inez by accident.

The living room smelled lightly of sandalwood incense. Behr had been sitting on the sofa for a long time. Perhaps three hours had gone by. He’d reviewed his notes a dozen times and had dozed. He had already searched the place top to bottom and sideways. He hadn’t found any financial records or journals, calendars, organizers, or diaries. Another thing he hadn’t found were any haircutting implements. Besides her personal brush, there wasn’t a single pair of scissors, a clipper, a comb or cape in the place. But he had discovered $3,800 in cash secreted in an empty jar of cold cream under the bathroom sink, and because of that he knew she’d be back. Eventually. When he had arrived a woman had been steering a baby in a stroller, with another slightly older child in tow, out of the building. The look of gratitude on her face as Behr held the door for her made it plain she wouldn’t be asking if he belonged as he entered. When he’d reached Flavia’s door, after knocking repeatedly and pressing an ear against the door, he’d made fast work of the old and basic Kwikset lock. She hadn’t bothered with the dead bolt. When he finished his search he had taken his seat. His phone buzzed once, and he checked it and saw the incoming call was from Susan. The phone buzzed again when her voice mail hit, but he didn’t listen to it. Instead, he gazed down at the coffee table, at the pile of cash there next to a scattered handful of Trojan Twists. His stomach ground on itself in hunger, and he considered whether he should help himself to some empanadas he’d found in the kitchen or do something ridiculous like order a pizza, when he heard keys jingling outside the door.

Susan Durant pulled over outside the Broad Ripple location of Women’s Choice Clinic and turned off the engine. She sat there staring straight ahead for a long moment, and Lynn, sitting in the passenger seat because someone had to be there to see her home after the procedure, did the same. She had been crying too much, feeling nauseous and headachy all day. She knew it was probably the hormones, but the realities of the situation weren’t helping any. In fact, the only times she’d felt halfway decent over the past few weeks was the moment she was drinking her morning cup of coffee-she’d read that one cup a day was okay-or eating pizza or pasta. Literally the moment she was eating it. While she was chewing the crispy crust or shoveling in the noodles and sauce she got a moment’s relief from the hollowed-out panicky feeling in her stomach. But the second she put down the fork and wiped her mouth, the queasy feeling would rush back over her and she’d long to be in her bed in a dark room. It seemed to be getting worse day by day. She’d even thrown up in her mouth at work the other day, for god’s sake, and not wanting anyone to know, had to swallow the vile stuff down.

“Suze?” Lynn said.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Lynn,” she said, not looking at her friend. “You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know.” Lynn nodded. “It never is. That’s what my parents said when I came out. Then I figured out it is what it is, and you’ve gotta deal with it.”

Susan nodded slowly and thought about Frank, off somewhere chasing down whoever killed his friend, and who knows what else. He was probably only across town, but he felt a world farther away than that.

“Well?” Lynn said, patient, her words a gentle prompt. Susan reached for the key in the ignition.

The yellow-and-white-striped tent was doing little to cut the sun’s glare, as pit bulls of all sizes, coat colors, and quality were busy being unloaded from trucks and cages. It was the end of the summer Bully B-B-Q. Terry Schlegel rubbed his face and drank his third Diet Pepsi of the morning and thought of the story on the cover of the newspaper. He’d been pushing hard, and he knew taking the little Latino out for spite might’ve been over the line, but as for some kid getting caught up in it, that wasn’t something he’d planned. A group of six or seven bull pups growled, barked, and yelped as they tumbled over one another playing grab-ass in some owner’s pen. Terry just wasn’t in the mood for this. The hangover was gripping him hard, and the pair of corn dogs he’d downed and the sodas weren’t helping. The splattering sounds that Dean had produced that morning played in his mind. It had woken him, and the noise of the spraying hose as Dean cleaned off the cement steps hadn’t allowed him to go back to sleep. The memory, and the smell of slow-cooking smoked pork rising from a large steel barrel barbecue pit, was enough to turn his stomach. Then he saw Charlie’s Durango pull up and glanced over to see him and Kenny pile out of the SUV. They circled around back and unloaded their pair of tiger stripe bullies. He felt a surge of pride at the sight of his boys, tall and strong, wrangling those beasts they pretended were dogs. He watched several passersby greet them. Black dudes, Latin guys, white girls. His boys were faces in this part of town, they had a name and were treated with respect, and it made Terry feel good. He kept watching, waiting for Deanie to join them.